Google's AI Mishap & the Fitbit Ace LTE

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
International authorities shut down a major botnet. How to check
if your machine has the affected malware. Your Android devices
are going to be part of a massive new finding network.
What you need to know about that a new smart
watch for kids might be exactly what the parents ordered.
Plus your tech questions answered? What's going on on richdmiro

(00:24):
And this is Rich on Tech. This is the show
where I talk about the tech stuff I think you
should know about. It's also the place where I answer
your questions about technology. I believe that tech should be interesting,
useful and fun. Phone lines are open at triple eight
Rich one oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four

(00:44):
to two four one zero one. If you'd like to
be on the show, give me a call. If you
have a question about technology, email is also open. Just
go to Rich on tech dot tv. That's Rich on
tech dot tv and hit the contact link. You can
send me an email. I may read it on the

(01:06):
show or answer your question.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
Guests.

Speaker 1 (01:10):
This week, we've got JP Schmetz, CEO of Ghoste. He
is a digital privacy expert, and he's going to discuss tools, browsers,
AI privacy and legislation like the American Privacy Rights Act
and Later in the show, we've got a Neil Subberwall
of Google Fitbit. He's going to discuss the company's new

(01:30):
connected smartwatch for kids, the Fitbit.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Ace LT Well, I'm.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
So glad that you joined me today for real news
about technology. Here's the thing that happens to me all
week long. I feel like I'm putting out tech fires.
There are so many news sources. There are so many reels,
There are so many tiktoks, there are so many headlines,
there are so many instagrams stories, There is so much

(02:02):
information floating around out there. What do most people do
They read the headlines? What do most headlines do? They
entice you with some sort of information that makes you
want to click. Now, that is the logical web that
we live in these days. You have to get people
to click. There are many ways you can get your information.

(02:23):
But I feel like half of my job is literally
telling people the real story behind things. So people will
come up to me and they'll say, hey, Rich, did
you see how while that situation was with the w
blop blup? And I say, well, let me explain what's
really happening there. There are so many reels that people

(02:44):
send me on a daily basis through Instagram, and it's
always some kind of secret hidden feature on the iPhone
or something that can make your Gmail work better or
something who knows. It's also nonsensical. So what I try
to do with my report sorts is try to help
you understand the tech news that you need to know

(03:05):
and also give you the actual information. It is so
easy to say that Facebook is evil, or that Google
is horrible, or that TikTok is bad, but let's get
the real story behind things. And one of those real
stories this week is with Google. So last week Google

(03:26):
introduced something called AI overviews. This is kind of like
an AI search overview of what you're looking for. So
this is something that I was testing for many, many months.
It's very helpful when you search for something on Google,
at the top of your results will be sort of
an AI generated summary that can really help you understand

(03:49):
the answer that you're looking for. Google also has something
called featured snippets, and these are kind of like little
snippets of websites, the text of a website that might
give you the answer you're looking for. So if you
say something like what temperature do I need to cook
a steak? To it might show you a featured snippet
from a website about grilling steak and saying steak should

(04:10):
be cooked to this temperature, and you say, oh, I
got the answer.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
It's done. It's easy.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
I see that it's from the Weber website. I trust them. Okay,
let's move on with life. AI overviews are very similar,
except it takes a bunch of information and sort of
synthesizes that into a little answer, kind of like CHATGBT,
but for your search result. So what happened was a
lot of people started asking Google when this thing went
wide to everyone. They rolled it out to many millions

(04:37):
of people over the past week. Well, people started getting
really interesting answers, But did they That's the thing that
Google now disputes. So Google has come out with an
entire blog post about this. So people are posting all
kinds of screenshots of odd and infactual overviews that Google
had purportedly returned. Turns out a lot of those were

(05:00):
faked screenshots. And here's the other thing about surfing the
web these days and being on social media, it's really
getting tough to figure out what's real and what's fake.
Even reputable news organizations these days, will post a click
baity headline and there might be some truth to it,
but you have to dig really hard to find out

(05:21):
what the true answer is. So, for instance, in my
newsletter this week, I talked about malware that is masquerading
as VPN software on computers, and in my newsletter, I
actually give you the names of the VPN software that
you should be searching for and the actual instructions on
how to search it. It's very simple, it's very straightforward,

(05:43):
and I feel like that's the best information that the
average person should have instead of scaring them and saying
they need to bring their computer in or stop using
your computer. Here's how you figure it out. And if
you can't figure it out using the instructions I give you,
well take it to someone who can ask someone that's younger,
like a teenager. They figure out this stuff very quickly.

(06:05):
But anyway, back to the Google stuff, So Google said
they explained kind of like how this is working. Their
AI overviews kind of work differently than a chatbot like
open AI because they're not just generating outputs based on
training data.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
What they're done.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
What they're doing is they're actually using kind of the
core Google search algorithm to come up with trusted websites
that generate these AI overviews using high quality links from
their index. Well, that means that these AI overviews don't
necessarily hallucinate like open AI and chat GBT and all
of these AI systems. Do these chatbots hallucinate They make

(06:43):
up stuff because what they're really doing is they are
just figuring out the next word in a sentence based
on millions of sentences that they've seen. So when you say,
you know, what's the most popular flavors for ice cream,
they look through all of the databases that they have
and they've seen that a lot of people have written
that the most popular flavors for ice cream are vanilla

(07:04):
and chocolate and strawberry, and they will write that up
and summarize that. Now, when AI overviews get it wrong,
according to Google, it's usually for other reasons. They misinterpret queries,
they misinterpret the nuance of language on the web, or
they don't have a lot of great information available. Remember
that last one, because that's the one that really got

(07:25):
this thing into trouble. So Google says that they did
test this feature extensively before launch, but when millions of
people starting start to use it, well, guess what, you're
gonna find some things out about this that you didn't
find before. Some of the things that people implied they
returned were dangerous results for topics like leaving dogs in cars,
smoking while pregnant, and depression. Those AI overviews, Google says,

(07:49):
never appeared. So we encourage anyone encountering any sort of
screenshots like that to do a search for yourself, which
probably a lot of people don't do. They just share
it on social media with out actually searching. One example
that I saw and a lot of people saw, was
how many rocks should I eat now? Prior to these
screenshots going viral, Google said, nobody ever asked that question

(08:11):
of Google. And so they call this a data void
or an information gap. That means there's a limited amount
of high quality content about a topic. So what happens.
AI overview goes to the one website that it found
information about that, and that's what it used to craft
its answer. In this case, it might have been a
form and there's a lot of good information in there,

(08:34):
but sometimes there's less than helpful advice and also sarcastic
and trolley content.

Speaker 2 (08:39):
So what to do?

Speaker 1 (08:41):
It cited that content and this is where it got
into trouble, Like using glue to get cheese to stick
to pizza. Nobody ever asked how do you get cheese
to stick to pizza? And nobody ever answered you should
use glue except someone in a form and that's what
Google sited. So where does this all go. Google can't
just go through and fix everything that it thinks people

(09:03):
are going to ask, So they have to come up
with a framework for this system, and that's what they've done.
So they've improved their framework for getting better answers in
these AI overviews. So they've built better detection mechanisms for
nonsensical queries. So if I say, how many bites does
it take to eat a MacBook laptop? Google AI search
results is not going to attempt to answer that anymore

(09:25):
because it knows that that's just nonsensical. Nobody asks now
if you ask how many licks does it take to
get to the center of a TUTSI pop? Sure people
might ask that, and they might end up answering that.
And by the way, do we ever figure out the
answer for that? Because that was a commercial that was
a part of my childhood for many years, and I
think at the end of the commercial. It always ended

(09:46):
in a chump, right, Oh, it's four four licks and
three licks.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
And then a chump. So that's what happened.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
They've updated their system to limit the use of a
of user generated content and response that could offer misleading advice,
and they added triggering restrictions for questions where AI overviews
were not proving to be helpful, and for topics like
news and health they already have strong guardrails in place.
For instance, they probably will not show AI overviews for

(10:15):
hard news topics because freshness is a big part of
questions like that. So when you ask a question about
the news something that just happened, yes, Google might have
it in its index in Google News, but it might
not have made it to the broader index of Google Search,
and so the AI overview will not be a good
way to answer that. So this is the real story,

(10:37):
and that's really what happened. And everyone gave up on
Google last week or this week because of these AI overviews.
But as we understand, a lot of them were faked,
a lot of them were just nonsensical. And yes, you
can ask anything in this world a nonsensical question and
get a nonsensical answer, so we will see how Google

(10:58):
continues to develop. They're AI overviews, but that is the
real story, all right. Coming up on today's show, I
will tell you how to remove that VPN malware if
it is on your computer.

Speaker 2 (11:10):
But first let's take some of your calls.

Speaker 1 (11:12):
Triple eight Rich one O one eight eight eight seven
four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
My name is Rich Dmiro. This is rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (11:21):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich DeMuro here hanging
out with you, talking technology at triple eight rich one
oh one. That's eight eight eight seven four to two
four one zero one. The website for the show richontech
dot tv. You can send me an email there by
hitting the contact link or uh. You can also sign

(11:46):
up for my newsletter while you're there, So if you
sign up for the newsletter, there's a brand new issue today,
just pop in your email address and that is packed
with tips, tricks and tech news to know. Of of course,
my TV segments as well, so if you want to
watch those, you can see them in the newsletter. It's
all at richon tech dot tv. If you want links
for the show, then in real time, like if you're

(12:08):
listening live on the radio, you can go for links
at Rich on tech dot tv and just hit the
light bulb.

Speaker 2 (12:15):
All right, let's go to.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
Mark in Lomita, California. Mark, You're on with Rich.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Hey Rich, good morning morning. What do you what brand
do you recommend for a car dash cam for like,
let's say two hundred dollars in under.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Well, there's a couple that I've tested that I really like.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
I think it really comes down to kind of what
you want and how much you want to pay. So
I think that the number one thing to figure out
is do you want this to be connected? Like do
you want a cellular connection on this? Because if someone
were to take the dash cam, they would have all
the footage, So the cellular helps you get alerts and
also helps you have that footage go to the cloud.

(13:00):
Is that something that interests you because those are a
little bit more expensive?

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Yeah, Like probably not, because I have seen some for
like four and five hundred dollars. Yeah, and I just
can't pay for that. It has to be like two
hundred or under.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
So there is a brand new brand. This just came out,
And this is a brand that I've tested in the
past that I really like. It's called Nexsar.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
Have you seen those?

Speaker 4 (13:27):
No?

Speaker 3 (13:27):
I have not.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Okay, So what I think a good dash cam comes
down to. Now, By the way, you can go on
Amazon search dash cams and you can find one for
forty bucks. Right, So there are many many dash cams
out there. I think what really sets apart If you
just want to point and shoot kind of camera that's
going to be in your car and roll every time
you're in there, any of those are gonna work. The

(13:48):
real difference, I think comes down to the software. How
tough is it to set this thing up? How tough
is it to get video off of it when you
actually need that video? And I think that's what's going
to make some of them a little bit more expensive
than the cheap knockoffs. So the big brand a couple
of the brands that I like that I've tested, Nextsar,
n e x Ar. They just came out with a

(14:11):
brand new one called the Beam two dash cam. And
what I like about this one is that not only
is the software from Nextsar really really good, they have
a bunch of different versions of this, so they have
you know, that's the other question you need to ask yourself, Mark,
do you want the road and the cabin or do
you just want the road, because some of these are,

(14:31):
you know, dual cameras where it records front and back,
so that's another thing to take into consideration. But this
one has a sixty four gigabyte model for two hundred dollars,
and then you've got a it goes up to three
hundred dollars for the for the dual mode one. And
then there's also this one does include for two hundred

(14:53):
dollars the cellular connection. So there is a monthly fee
of ten dollars a month or eight dollars a month
if you pay yearly. So that's just one option. They
also have other cameras that are not connected, that are
just standalone, and I really just like the brand and
I like the way that their software works. So Nexstar
is one of them.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
Let's see.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
The other one that I've tested that I really like
is from Vava va Va and so this one i've tested.
The software is decent, the camera's good, it's got a
nice design, it works really well, and so you can
find those for under two hundred dollars. A lot of
them are sold out on their website, so I'm not
sure what's going on there, but I would check into those.

(15:35):
And then the one that gets the brand that keeps
coming up over and over and all these sort of
like review sites is called Van True v A N
T r U E. Now I have not tested that
brand personally, but it does come up in a lot
of these review sites that people seem to like it.
And the other thing to keep in mind is that
when you run these dash cams, there is a cable

(15:57):
typically and that could get kind of annoying. So just
kind of keep a look at how this thing connects.
Some of them connect to the oh gosh, what's that
port called like the OBD port or whatever it's called.

Speaker 5 (16:09):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
So that's like, you know, that's the left.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
Of your of your steering wheel down below by the
you know, the gears and all that stuff, or the
you know, the gas pedal.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
So that's one way.

Speaker 1 (16:21):
Other way another way they connect is just going into
like what used to be called the cigarette lighter. I
guess they call it what the the power port, right, right,
whatever that thing's called these days, right, the uh you know,
so you just have to remember, like, you know, the
running the cable could also be an issue. But you know,
a lot of them come with tools in the box
to help you run it along your dash, down the

(16:42):
side of the door and then over.

Speaker 2 (16:44):
So those are a couple of brands.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
The other websites I would check out that I like
is Wirecutter if you've heard of them. They they were
a great independent site. They were bought by the New
York Times, but they still do some pretty good reviews.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
I would check them.

Speaker 1 (16:59):
And then the other one is best Reviews dot com,
which is owned by the parent company of the TV
station I work for. But those are some good places
to start. It will all be linked up on the
website rich on Tech dot tv. Thanks for the call.
Mark eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one. Welcome

(17:21):
back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out
with you talking technology at triple eight rich one oh
one eight eight eight seven four to.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
Two four one zero one.

Speaker 1 (17:33):
I hope you're having a fantastic day. So this week,
the US, along with some international partners and authorities, took
down a major major botnet. This is the nine to
eleven S five botnet. This was active from May twenty
fourteen to July twenty twenty two, and then it came

(17:58):
back again in October twenty twenty three. So this thing
has been around for a very long time. It compromised
over nineteen million computers globally.

Speaker 2 (18:09):
What does that mean.

Speaker 1 (18:10):
It means that all of these people downloaded software to
their computer that they thought would do one thing, but
it was actually turning their computer into a secret zombie.
That this, you know, these bad actors could use to
carry out crimes, and they used it to carry out
cyber crimes and fraud and harassment and all kinds of

(18:30):
things because it looked like, you know, these computers at
big companies, right, they can detect when they're seeing fraud
because it comes from registered IP addresses that they sort
of know. It's like a block of IPS that they say, Okay,
this looks odd, but when it comes from your computer
in your house, it does not look odd. And we're

(18:51):
seeing this kind of attack happening more and more, and
so the FBI took this down and they put instructions
on the web to help people figure out if they
were running this VPN software. That's what it was, if
they're running this VPN malware on their computer. So the
names of this VPN malware mask, VPN, Do VPN, DW

(19:17):
Paladin VPN, Proxy, gate Shield VPN, and Shine VPN. So
all of these people downloaded this software thinking, oh, I
can use a free VPN online that I found and
next thing, you know, you would never realize that your
computer is doing nefarious things in the background. So how

(19:38):
do you find if this is on your computer? Well,
you search for it. You can go into your task
manager by pressing control alt delete and looking for the
processes named mask, do or you know the other ones
I mentioned. You can use the start menu to search
for any of the VPN names listed above that I
just mentioned, and you can go to your ad or

(19:59):
remove programs and search for the malicious software names there.
There's also a more geeky way of looking and file explorer,
but that's if you're really advanced. The bottom line, I
did get a good question on my Facebook page. Someone asked, hey,
is my malware bytes going to detect this? And malware
bytes actually did a blog post about it, but they

(20:22):
don't make it really clear if it detects this software
in the background. But they said you should look for
this manually and then do a manual scan of your computer.
So That's what I would do. Even if you're running
something like a malware bytes or any of these other programs,
I would just take a look and make sure that
none of these VPN applications are listed on your machine,

(20:45):
and if they are, get them off of there because
you don't want them on there. Mask VPN, Do VPN,
Paladin VPN, proxygate Shield VPN, and Shine VPN.

Speaker 2 (20:56):
All of those.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Instructions are on the website. Go to Rich on tech
dot tv. You can tap the latest newsletter that is
information is in there, or you can tap the light
bulb and that will bring you to the link for
that FBI information. Let's go to John in studio, John
in Fallbrook, California.

Speaker 2 (21:15):
John, you're on with Rich.

Speaker 4 (21:18):
Thanks Rich, enjoy your show. Thank you for taking my question.

Speaker 6 (21:22):
Yeah, I have I have an R low Pro five camera, okay,
and I can't seem to hook it up to my
WiFi and I'm using LTE at home with Verizon. I
had one of these cameras before, the.

Speaker 4 (21:40):
Same model, and I had hooked it up and it
was connected to the WiFi and then the battery went dead,
so I brought it in and charged it and I
never was able to communicate again, so I called Arlow.
They sent me a new one and I can't get
connected now an ideas.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
Okay, so you have you have the rlow camera, and
you have you have the Verizon Home Internet box.

Speaker 4 (22:11):
Yeah, LTE at home right.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
Okay, So and that puts out a Wi Fi signal.

Speaker 4 (22:16):
That's correct, it's a router, a cell, a cell signal
that goes into a router into a WiFi got it?

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Okay, yeah, just their standard. So have you.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
So I'm guessing that this camera is on the two
point four gigahertz network, and your Verizon box is putting
out a five g signal, a five gigahertz signal as
it's as its base signal, and this camera is not
finding the other one.

Speaker 7 (22:45):
So do you know it puts out a five and
a two point four okay, And I'm almost sure that
it's on the two point four.

Speaker 4 (22:55):
It's on the same network that the other one was on,
and it's the same network that my phone uses. But
one of my TVs uses the five.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
Okay, yeah, if it's newer. The five is the newer,
kind of more robust network. So what I would do
here is I would factory reset this camera to get
it back.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
Have you done that.

Speaker 4 (23:22):
There? I have used the SINC button. I don't know
if any factory reset.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
Okay, So I would just a quick search online for
r LOW and then factory reset. So I would start
fresh with this camera and I would try to connect
it to your router that way and see going through
the setup process.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
That's number one.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
If that does not work, then I would flip that
little Verizon Home Internet box over. There is instructions on
the bottom on how to connect to the actual box
to modify the network.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Have you been into those settings at all?

Speaker 8 (23:56):
No?

Speaker 1 (23:57):
I haven't, Okay, so proceed with caution because you don't
want to change a lot of stuff and mess things up.
But what you're looking for is a way to temporarily
turn off that five gigahertz spectrum, that five gigahertz band
on that Verizon box, just to connect this camera. And
then once the camera gets connected to that, because that

(24:18):
will be the only network that it sees, hopefully it'll
just go on there and then you can turn on
that five gigahertz network again. It seems like you're not
the only one having this problem. If you look up online,
I'm sure you've seen that. There are some there are
some other folks having the same issue, but everyone that
I'm seeing it sounds like the reset will definitely make

(24:41):
this work again. I think what's happening is your camera
is looking for that other network that it used to remember,
and it's not finding that for some reason. And so
I think you just need to reset this camera back
to factory and then hopefully it will find that two
point four spectrum.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
Good question, John.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
We often get that question a lot of people having
trouble with some devices, with these routers. It's just it's
doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen. Teresa
in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania writes in Hey, Rich, I have a
question regarding paying my bills using a password manager. I
understand how to set it up, but the password manager
acts as a safe for all my accounts and their passwords.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Correct.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
When I open up the password manager using the master
password and gain access to my best Buy account using
my best Buy username and password to pay my bill,
this is where I'm confused. Thanks for your time, Teresa,
So you're correct. The password manager does act as a
vault for all of your accounts and their passwords, and
most of them will actually log you in. So when
you go to the best Buy website, if you have

(25:43):
that information saved in your password manager, it will automatically
fill that information in without you doing much and it
will actually even log you in. Now, if it doesn't
do that, or you're not comfortable with that, you can
just open up your password manager when you need to
log into best Buy again, and you would just go
and search best Buy inside your vault and you would

(26:03):
just copy the password from the manager and then paste
it into the best Buy website. Usually your username is
your email address. You don't need to copy and paste that.
But those are the two ways you do it. It
is very straightforward, it is very simple. But ninety nine
percent of the time these password managers are actually going
to just fill in the information on their own. There's

(26:24):
not much you have to do. Sometimes, if the website's
a little different or a little off, which you need
to be careful about, it will say, hey, are you
sure this is the website? Are you sure you want
us to paste this in? I've noticed that they've gotten
pretty smart about pasting stuff in. But otherwise, you can
always go into your password manager and just manually copy
and paste that password. You just have to remember that

(26:45):
strong master password for your vault and keep that in
a safe place somewhere in your head. And also set
up two factor authentication. Great question if you have one.
Go to the website rich on Tech dot TV. Hit contact.
All right, coming up, I'm gonna tell you about this
new fit Bit ace lte, the new smart watch for kids.

(27:05):
Find out how it keeps them active and keeps parents connected.
Eighty eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven

Speaker 2 (27:14):
This is rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Rich DeMuro here hanging out with you, talking technology at
Triple eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four two four one zero one. Hope you don't mind
the trip down memory lane. We're playing some ninety songs
this weekend.

Speaker 2 (27:35):
I just looked it up.

Speaker 1 (27:36):
That song kissed Me by sixpence none the Richer came
out twenty.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Seven years ago.

Speaker 1 (27:46):
Oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, I cannot believe that
I was. You know, if you listen to like a
classy a classic station, like a classic rock, sometimes they
play songs from like like We're getting up there in
those anyway. It's just like when I when I was
growing up, classic songs were like.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
I don't know, I don't whatever. Anyway, it's not a
music show. Uh, let's go to Fran. Let's go to
Fran and Studio City.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
Fran.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
You're on with Rich.

Speaker 9 (28:16):
Hi Rich, longtime fan.

Speaker 10 (28:19):
So I'm in the market for a new TV.

Speaker 11 (28:23):
And currently we want to keep our spectrum.

Speaker 10 (28:27):
Because we have a DVR, and we use a Roku,
and we have an LG an older LG TV that
won't let me update any more apps or anything like that.
So what's annoying is that every time we need to
go to, say spectrum, we have to change the input.

Speaker 9 (28:51):
And so I'm looking at the TVs and someone told
me that a Samsung has Spectrum built in in, so
we wouldn't have that issue. But I'm an big Apple user.

Speaker 10 (29:07):
I have Apple all over the house.

Speaker 9 (29:10):
Apple airport extenders, and I'm wondering if that's if I
go to Samsung, if it's going to uh interfere with
my Apple setup, you just give.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Me more headache. Do you have an Apple TV?

Speaker 1 (29:31):
Nokay not, so what's your Apple set up?

Speaker 2 (29:34):
With the with the TV situation, It's just right now.

Speaker 9 (29:40):
It's a USB into an airport, an airport extender.

Speaker 1 (29:47):
Okay, so you're not using you're not using any aspect
of your Apple stuff with the TVs.

Speaker 10 (29:53):
The only thing I have is an older Apple TV,
you know, one of those little squares, and and I
do use that occasionally to make it easy to access
Apple screen sharing.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
Okay, is that connected to your main TV?

Speaker 10 (30:14):
Pardon me?

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Is that connected to your main TV?

Speaker 10 (30:17):
I can connect it because I have four HDMI ports.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
Okay, Well here here's what I would say. So a
couple of things here. Number one, you've got the DVR
from Spectrum. You don't want to give that up because
you you like your DVR, you like your programs, you
like switching channels.

Speaker 2 (30:32):
Is that what I'm understanding?

Speaker 10 (30:34):
Yeah, mainly mainly to the ballgame.

Speaker 12 (30:37):
But yeah, no, I get it way, I get it too.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
So there there is a Spectrum TV app, and I
think that's what your friend is referring to. And Samsung,
according to the Spectrum website, Samsung Smart TVs do have
that app. So theoretically you could ditch the box on
this TV, use the Samsung Smart TV interface onload the
apps for like Netflix and things like that and then

(31:03):
you can also just open up the Spectrum app.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Now that would be without a box.

Speaker 13 (31:07):
So, uh, I don't want to eliminate the buvenant, Okay, No.

Speaker 10 (31:12):
We want to be able to use the DVR, fast forward,
go back, record stuff, all of that.

Speaker 1 (31:18):
Yeah, and some of that you can do on the
on this Spectrum app. I personally I use the Spectrum app. I.
It's not as easy as the actual box, of course,
not because it's an app and you know the channels
and things.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Everything's just kind of a little bit.

Speaker 10 (31:32):
Right, and my husband is app resistant.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
Okay, so that's fine.

Speaker 1 (31:36):
So if you want to get a TV and you
want a smart TV, there's a couple of ways you
can do this. Number one, you can get what's called
the Fire TV Cube. And what's neat about the Fire
TV Cube is that you can have all the smart
stuff on your screen, but your your DVR from Spectrum
actually plugs into the back of that and then that

(31:58):
plugs into your TV.

Speaker 2 (31:59):
So what that.

Speaker 1 (32:00):
Means is that you when you so you see your
DVR all day like your TV is just the way
it is right, just the way it is today with
your with your Spectrum DVR. But when you want to
watch Netflix, all you have to do is press a
button on the Fire TV remote and without changing an input,
it's just gonna overlay Netflix on top of your screen already.
So it's one input for your entire setup. Now, that

(32:24):
box is a little expensive because it's a it's over
one hundred dollars. Plus you have the TV, plus you
have your DVR. But that's the cleanest setup that I
can think of. If you want to continue using that
DVR box and go with a smart TV. Now, if
you just go with a Samsung Smart TV, you can
still use the smart TV, but yes, you are gonna
have to change inputs every time you want to use

(32:48):
that DVR with Spectrum and then switch to something like
a Netflix, it will have to switch to that that
Netflix input.

Speaker 2 (32:55):
Okay, that's on the smart TV kind of side of things.

Speaker 11 (33:00):
Currently, we're currently using ro coup because on our other
TVs in the house, we use the Spectrum.

Speaker 14 (33:11):
App on the ro coup.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
Okay, yeah, so you already understand what that set up is, Like,
what are you asking me? What are you trying to
figure out?

Speaker 8 (33:20):
That's why I, uh, well, I've been you know, we've
been a big fan of the l G TVs. They've
been great, So I guess when I when I was
investigating them, somebody said that the Sanson TV is a

(33:41):
better option for people that.

Speaker 13 (33:44):
Want to eliminate one of the uh, you know, eliminate
changing the import or.

Speaker 10 (33:51):
Eliminate one of the remote.

Speaker 14 (33:56):
So I don't know, but I guess what I want
to know is what does Samsung TV If it.

Speaker 13 (34:08):
Does eliminate one of the remote will it interfere with
my Apple setup?

Speaker 1 (34:15):
I don't think it's going to interfere with your Apple setup,
but a couple of things. I would look for a
TV that has airplay built in. A lot of these
smart TVs do, which means you'll be able to share
stuff from your iPhone screen to that TV. Various brands
now have that built in, so I would look for
airplay on that TV.

Speaker 10 (34:34):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (34:35):
And then when it comes to whether you go with
Samsung or LG, if you like LG, stick with LG.
I am not sure if it will eliminate any sort
of remote control or anything, because if you want to
use that Spectrum DVR, that's going to be on one
input and then the other input is going to have
all of the smart stuff all of the smarts from
the TV. That's generally how they work. So unless the

(34:57):
lgtvs are overlaying the smarts on top of the spectrum box,
go with the TV you want. Just make sure it
has airplace you can use all your Apple stuff and
make sure the smart TV supports the apps that you.

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Want to use.

Speaker 1 (35:11):
Eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one. This is
rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich
Demiro here hanging out with you, talking technology at Triple
A rich one O one. That's eight eight eight seven
four two four one zero one.

Speaker 4 (35:35):
Coming up.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
There we go, gotta get the hook, like Bobo says.
Coming up this hour, we're gonna talk to JP Schmtz,
CEO of ghoste. He is a digital privacy expert and advocate. Plus,
I'll tell you about Amazon Prime members get a tasty

(36:00):
new perk, and how Google is auto enrolling Android devices
in the Find my network.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
I'll tell you what you need to know.

Speaker 1 (36:11):
Eighty eight rich one O one eight eight eight seven

Speaker 2 (36:15):
My name is rich Demiro.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
This is the show where we talk about the tech
stuff I think you should know about. Just got a
message from my wife. My child has won the championships
for his little league baseball team.

Speaker 2 (36:32):
That is very exciting.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
So congrats to my uh my child Tanner, who has
been playing baseball for a while.

Speaker 5 (36:41):
Now.

Speaker 1 (36:42):
Speaking of kids, Tanner is actually helping me test out
a new gadget. It's called the Fitbit ace LTE. This
is a fitbit, but it's really a smart watch for
kids and their parents.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
Oh we are the champions. Here we go.

Speaker 1 (36:59):
We got a little celebration song. Oh here we go
sounds so good. Sadly, no one on the podcast will
be able to enjoy this. Did you play baseball?

Speaker 9 (37:13):
Bo?

Speaker 14 (37:13):
Bo?

Speaker 15 (37:14):
No?

Speaker 2 (37:14):
I played football? Football? Okay, there we go. Our kids
listening to this song at this point, There we go.
It's actually amazing. As a mark of modern technology, I'm

(37:34):
able to keep an eye on my kids game right here.
I've got a little They stream the games.

Speaker 1 (37:40):
I mean if you would have told me that ten
years ago, I would never would have believed it. But yeah,
they they have cameras at these fields and you can
just watch online.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
Anyway. Congratulations to them.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
Yes, as I was talking about, he is helping me
test this new Fitbit ace LTE. This is a smart
watch design for kids ages seven and uh and what
it's meant to do is help them combine exercise with
play to encourage an active lifestyle. But it also helps
mom and dad and guardians and grandparents keep in touch

(38:11):
with your child. So it combines the tracking element, the
physical activity tracking element, with actual location tracking, calls and texts.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
So let me tell you about this device.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
It's got interactive games built in that reward physical activity.
So yesterday when Tanner started setting this thing up, he goes, Dad,
I can't play any of the games. I said, well, yeah,
you got to get out there and move before it
unlocks the games. So that's kind of interesting. It's got
activity tracking, so there's this noodle activity ring. It's got
an EG. I hope I'm saying that right. These are

(38:44):
little customizable creatures that get healthier and happier as kids
meet their activity goals. So Tanner was of course customizing
his EG to look like him, which was kind of fun.
And then when it comes to privacy and safety, parents
can view their child's location and their activity data. This
is protected and deleted after a set period of time,

(39:06):
so twenty four hours for location data thirty five days
for activity. Parents can always call, send, and receive messages,
and manage contacts through the fitbit ace app. I will
talk about more of that in a moment, because that's
the interesting part of this whole thing. There is a
school time mode. There is water resistance up to fifty meters,
sixteen hours of battery life between charges. Comes with strong

(39:29):
glass for scratch resistance, a bumper that's included to keep
this thing from hitting the wall. My kids have Apple Watches,
and a lot of times they'll hit the wall with
the Apple Watch and it scratches it or it cracks
the screen. It's happened with both of them. So if
you have an Apple Watch, get one of those little
plastic screen protectors or glass screen protectors to save you

(39:50):
a headache of getting a three hundred dollars screen repair.
There's also six different bands. The bands are unique because
each one of them looks unique. But when you you
snap it onto the watch, it changes the watch face
and it kind of changes the whole theme of the watch.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
That's kind of fun.

Speaker 1 (40:06):
So this is two hundred and thirty dollars, which I
know is very expensive, but a lot of parents are
looking for something like this, and a lot of the
current solutions out there are pretty bad. If it's not
the Apple Watch, it goes downhill very very fast. Data
is ten dollars a month, or one hundred and twenty

(40:27):
dollars for the year if you buy one. Now they're
slashing that in half, so she'll get your first year
of data for sixty dollars. So all in for the
first year, you're looking at about two hundred and ninety dollars.
That includes the watch and the service. It's available June
fifth through the Google Store and Amazon. Now Here is

(40:47):
what I've noticed the catches. And by the way, we're
gonna have a Neil's subber wall of Google Fitbit to
discuss this in more detail in the third hour of
the show.

Speaker 2 (40:57):
But I figure I tell you all about this watch.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
And my observation because here's what I noticed setting up
this watch. This is not a classic cellular connected watch
as you might expect. There is no phone number for
this device as far as I can tell, so it
is LTE connected, but all of the calling and all

(41:19):
of the texting and messaging actually goes through the app.

Speaker 2 (41:22):
What does that mean?

Speaker 1 (41:25):
It means that to set people up to be able
to communicate with this watch. It's a little trickier than
just giving out a phone number. And I think that's
the biggest thing that parents should know if you are
thinking about buying this compared to something like an Apple Watch. So,
for instance, with the Apple Watch, both of my kids
have an assigned phone number. I can give you that
phone number, just like I can any other device.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
In the world.

Speaker 1 (41:45):
Anyone can text or call that phone number. Now that's
good and that's bad. It makes it easy to get
in touch with it, but it makes it bad for
you know, a random person can text them. My kids
get they actually get invites, like club events, like the
kind of stuff that Bobo's promoting on his social media.
Like it'll be like, hey, come up to the eighteen

(42:05):
plus club on Friday night. It's like free, free entry
for guys before midnight. And my kids, You're like, what
is this And so I'm like, now that's a spam text,
I mean, or it's just misdirected.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
I'm promoting because it's my birthday party. It is your
birthday is this week. It's Wednesday, the fifth, the national holiday.

Speaker 1 (42:22):
That's it. It's the Bobo Holiday. Yes, it is Bobo's birthday.
How do you feel about turning what you're turning. I'm
proud to turn to forty one. It's a milestone.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
Well I think forty is a milestone. Well, forty one
is the milestone. There you go. I just feel older. Yeah,
woke up this morning and my knee was already hurt.

Speaker 1 (42:46):
The power of suggestion. I'm getting older. But you do
notice as you get older that you know you're getting older.
When you move, you make sounds.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
As you move like.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
Ow yeah, and you will have that moment when when
you move just a certain way and all of a sudden,
it's just you crick something and it's it's that's it.
It's gonna feel that way for a week. Well, happy birthday, Bobo.
So that is the main thing to know about this
device is that adding contacts like I want to add

(43:17):
my kid as one of the contacts like his brother
and said, okay, you need a Gmail account. So it
seems like the person that has that wants to contact
this device has to go through the fitbit Ace app,
which is a little weird. It's a little wonky. It's
not as like straightforward. Now with that said, I think
for a kid ages seven to twelve. It's probably not

(43:38):
a bad idea. You're if you're a parent, you're gonna
download this app. It's gonna be very simple to text
back and forth with your kids to see where they
are on a map. It's all very good. It's just
I think you just need to know that one little
key aspect of it is that it's not a phone
number assigned to this watch. So as long as you're
cool with that, I think this is a really, really

(43:58):
good solution. The software is excellent, the device is excellent
so far.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
I'm still testing it.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
I'll have my full review soon, but I think that
that is what you need to know about the fitbit
ace LTE.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
I will have a.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
Full interview a little bit later on in the show.
All right, we'll get to some more questions in a
moment at eight eight eight rich one one eight eight
eight seven four to two four one zero one before
we go to break. Amazon has a new Prime perk.
You now get grub Hub Plus membership if you are
a Prime member for free and ongoing. This is supposedly

(44:32):
worth one hundred and twenty dollars annually.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
But give me a break.

Speaker 1 (44:38):
You are paying so much extra if you are ever
ordering anything online to be delivered to your house. And yes,
they can say, oh, you're getting zero delivery fees on
eligible orders over twelve dollars, but you're still paying a
service fee, and those service fees more than makeup for whatever.
So yes, you're paying less than a person that's just
coming to the Grubhub app that doesn't have them membership,

(45:00):
but you're still paying a premium to get someone to
go to a restaurant, pick up your food and bring
it to your house. That's how these things work. And
we did it last night. Nothing against it. We did
DoorDash last night and it's great. It is convenience. It
was seven dollars more to have someone bring it to
my house then for me to go pick it up.
But on a Friday night, do I feel like going out? No,

(45:22):
I just wanted to go home and have someone bring
my food to me, so I paid that premium.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
Do I do it every night? Absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
It is way too expensive to order food through these apps.
They do have a promotional offer so now through June.
Now through is it June second, it's only a couple
more days. Prime members can save five dollars on a
Grubhub order over twenty five dollars using the code prime five.
The other news here is that you can order Grubhub

(45:50):
through the Amazon App, so one less app on your phone.
You do have to activate it, but if you go
to the Amazon app and you search grubhub, you can
activate the Grubhub within the Amazon app, and you can
also activate that free prime five code. Let me just
confirm that it that it actually expires when it does,
because you've got to act on that fast if you

(46:12):
want it. Let's see zero dollar. Yeah, it's only through
June second, so if you want to, yeah, basically this weekend.

Speaker 2 (46:20):
So that's it.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
Five dollars off your twenty five dollars order. But you
now get Grubhub plus for the entire year. It used
to be once you signed up for it renew at
one hundred and twenty dollars.

Speaker 2 (46:31):
They're only doing it as like a promo. Now it's
going to be indefinitely.

Speaker 1 (46:35):
Eighty to eight Rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
This is rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (46:40):
More rich on Tech coming your way right after this.
Welcome back to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking
technology at eighty to eight rich one O one eight
eight eight seven four to two four one zero one
the website for the show rich on Tech dot TV,
and you can find me on social media. I am

(47:01):
at you guessed it, rich on Tech.

Speaker 15 (47:05):
Let's go to.

Speaker 1 (47:06):
Don in Rancho, Palos Verdes, California. Don Dan, you're on
with Rich.

Speaker 16 (47:13):
Yeah, Hi, Rich. I got a question about passwords. I
had these password compromises, and that says I should change
the password. And then I go and look on it.
There's one hundred and fifty five passwords I have to
take care.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
Of that were compromised, or that you have total?

Speaker 16 (47:34):
Well I have total, but there there's that many compromised
and I should change the password immediately.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
I'm like, wow, okay, that does seem overwhelming. Yeah, what's
telling you that these passwords are compromised?

Speaker 16 (47:50):
I just says that there was a data leak, and
I heard something on Ticketmaster was compromised. I noticed Ticketmaster
is one of the account.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
But which which app is telling you that these are compromised?
Is it Google? Chrome? Is it the I FID.

Speaker 16 (48:05):
Would to ge let me see it would be where
you just check on password. So have I been on
the computer?

Speaker 2 (48:14):
Have I? Oh, oh, so on your computer on your
Chrome web browser.

Speaker 16 (48:21):
Uh, Chrome, I'm not sure. I don't see Chrome. I
think it's a Google.

Speaker 2 (48:25):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
So if you go to passwords dot Google dot com,
is that okay? If you go there and you're looking
at password check up, is that what.

Speaker 16 (48:32):
You're I'm on passwords it says detect compromise password security
recommendation okay, and what not? Sure what it's under?

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Yeah, like what's telling you to do that? Because that's
that's my question.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
I don't now are you using the same password across
all one hundred and fifty five websites?

Speaker 16 (48:53):
No, of course not. Okay, so they're different.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
I doubt that all of your past Are you using
a password manager?

Speaker 16 (49:02):
No, I'm not. That's what I was wondering. Okay, should
I go to that?

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Yeah? I would.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
So what I would do is if you're gonna, if
you're gonna embark on this password change. Now, first off,
I'm a little concerned as to what is serving up
this message to you because it sounds a little bit fishy,
and so I'm a little concerned that you know, something
is maliciously trying to serve you up a message. But
I you know, without knowing what's telling you to change

(49:29):
these passwords. Here's what I would do. My main thing
is that I think you should try to get a
password manager in use, and if you're using I have
a couple of recommendations for that.

Speaker 2 (49:39):
So if you're using to use an iPhone or Android iPhone, okay, so,
and you're using a Chrome web browser on your computer.

Speaker 16 (49:51):
I believe it's Google.

Speaker 2 (49:53):
It's it's Google, okay, so Google Chrome.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
So I would you could use the Google Chrome built
in password manager. So if you go on Google Chrome
upper right hand corner, there's three little dots and that's
the menu button. If you go to passwords and autofill,
there is an option called Google Password Manager, and you
can start using that to save your passwords and to

(50:18):
also generate your passwords. And then on your iPhone, you
want to go in and actually set the Google Password
Manager as your preferred autofill and then anytime you encounter
a website that you need to log into, Google will
spring into action and say, oh, I know the password,
and it will fill it in for you.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
So that's the main thing.

Speaker 1 (50:37):
If you're going to embark on this journey to change
one hundred and fifty five passwords. That's what I would do,
so that you get them all in a safe place
and they are generated, unique and strong and one time only.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
Now, the way I.

Speaker 1 (50:51):
Would tackle the one hundred and fifty five passwords change
is I would start with your main apps, So the
main most secure app, so that's your banking, that is
your email, and I think those are pretty much your
financial and your email is kind of in your social
media if you have them.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
Those are the main ones.

Speaker 1 (51:10):
You want to change first, and then of course you
can change the lesser ones a little bit later as
you get down this path.

Speaker 2 (51:16):
But that's what I would do. Okay, does that sound good?
Sound doable?

Speaker 16 (51:22):
I will try it?

Speaker 5 (51:23):
Thanks for yeah.

Speaker 1 (51:25):
And the website I would go to first is just
go to passwords dot Google dot com to see if
you're already using that password manager, and if you aren't,
there's a little that's an easy way to turn it on.
You can just hit the gear icon on that page
and it says offer to save passwords, and there's also
auto sign in, So that's probably the easiest way to

(51:46):
do it. And you know that'll work across your iPhone
and your Chrome web browser, and it's a it's a nice, free,
easy way to start with a password manager.

Speaker 16 (51:56):
Got it, Thanks so much.

Speaker 1 (51:57):
All right, Dan, looks like you've got some homework there.
I will be I will be checking it and grading
it when you come into class on Monday morning.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
So please complete it in Uh.

Speaker 1 (52:08):
You don't have to complete all one hundred and fifty five,
but do as much as you can, all right. Eighty
eight rich one one eight eight eight seven four to
two four one zero one. So Google is going to
start in auto enrolling Android devices in their find my network.
So this is their equivalent of Google of Apple's AirTag

(52:29):
find my Network.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
I'm gonna tell you all about that.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
But coming up, we're gonna talk privacy. We're gonna talk
with the CEO of Ghostry, and he's gonna tell us
about tools, browsers and how to protect ourselves online. That's
coming up right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich On Tech. Rich Demiro here hanging out with you,

(52:52):
talking technology. We'll get back to the phone lines in
just a moment. That's eighty eight rich one on one
eight eight eight seven four to two four one zero one.
But first let's talk to JP Schmatt's CEO, of Ghosty.
This is an ad blocker and a privacy browser and

(53:13):
JP is a digital privacy expert and advocate.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
JP. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 5 (53:19):
Thanks thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
So explain what ghosty is all about.

Speaker 5 (53:23):
First off, well, ghostri is an extension to your existing browsers.
So you're surfing with Chromo, Safario Edge or whatever you use,
and you put us on, and what we do is
we basically make sure that all of the stuff you
don't see. So all of the trackers that are behind
the pages that you visit are basically not showing up

(53:44):
in your browser and therefore not able to know where
you were.

Speaker 2 (53:49):
So yeah, keep going.

Speaker 5 (53:51):
Yeah, every time you load the page, there's a you know,
fifty to sixty seventy trackers behind it from Google, Facebook,
tech Talk, et cetera. Basically look looking at what you
are doing. And that's why you have sometimes the impressions
that ads are following you around or your phone is
listening to you. In fact, it's very often just these
trackers looking at what you're doing online.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
Oh that's like a number one question I get is
people think that their phone is listening to their conversations.
But you're saying that these trackers are so ubiquitous that
that's actually what's making those things show up on our
Instagram feeds.

Speaker 5 (54:26):
Yes, that's much more likely. So you're doing a searching Google,
you're visiting pages, you're surfing along the web, and all
of these tracks are being recorded, and then somehow you
have the feeling that people have been listening to you,
but in fact they've just been watching you. And ghost
three is removing this even before it happens.

Speaker 2 (54:44):
So what's the benefit of removing this information?

Speaker 5 (54:49):
Well, first and foremost, your pages will load faster because
you can't believe how many megabytes are being you know,
at than going over your bandwidth, so you'll the net
will go faster, you will use less over your bandwidth
if you're limited in that way, and the big tech

(55:10):
and the trackers will not have the information about what
you did and therefore will not bid on the ads
that you know that would be retargeting you.

Speaker 1 (55:19):
And so do you recommend that people install these sorts
of things? I wonder you know, as we Yeah.

Speaker 5 (55:25):
Go ahead, absolutely absolutely. We just did a survey that
shows that people who work in advertising or people who
work in tech are you know, infinitely more likely to
have an ad blocker and anti tracker install on their
brother so people will know what's going on. Basically install that.

Speaker 1 (55:42):
And so my question is if everyone installs these ad blockers,
what about all these companies that you know, depend on
that advertising revenue. Is there another way for them to
make money.

Speaker 5 (55:53):
Well, it doesn't block all ads. It tends to block
ads that are coming through so called programmatic networks, so
basically as that are coming from other places than the
site that you are visiting. So it's true that some
websites tend to rely on these network you know, exclusively,
and they will obviously make less money from a ghost

(56:16):
rey user than a normal user, but a lot of
website i have moved to a different type of advertising
that doesn't rely on having private information about you.

Speaker 1 (56:24):
Why do you think we're seeing such an interest in
kind of this privacy conversation.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
These days?

Speaker 5 (56:34):
Well because it keeps getting worse. Right, ghost Rey was
founded in two thousand and eight and we thought, oh
that was pretty bad at that time, but it's nothing
compared to what it is today. It's just there are
more and more of these trackers, and the attic industry
is getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, and people get educated
or they hear it from someone they know and trust

(56:56):
that they should use something like this. They do, and
then obviously the work becomes faster and a lot cleaner.
So it's hard to go back when you try.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
It now because a lot of the web is supported
by advertising. I mean, where do we move forward? Like,
you know, how do we move past this? Kind of
like if you're not paying for a product, you are
the product, right, isn't that with the ideas?

Speaker 5 (57:21):
Well, that's what the idea is when you're not using
an ad blocker. I think when you're using an ad blocker,
what tends to happen? I think that a good example
is maybe YouTube. So we do block the ads on YouTube,
but most of the creators on YouTube have ads that
are embedded in their podcast right, because they've learned as
well that Google is not necessarily their friends when it
comes to monetization. So you go back to a more

(57:44):
traditional form of advertising, which doesn't rely on on what
you were doing two days ago, but rely on the
context in which you are at the moment.

Speaker 2 (57:54):
That's interesting too, because I know YouTube it's been kind
of a cat and mouse game between the ad blockers
and youtub too, because they've been pushing back and that
is that something you guys have to like figure out
every other day, like, oh they've switched something again.

Speaker 5 (58:09):
It's not every other day. But they did a major
pustion in a fourth quarter of last year and what
happened was really interesting. We saw a massive increase in users.
So even though it was kind of not working most days,
but people wanted it to work, so they kept trying
to switch browser install us on a different broider. We
saw massive movements of people between Chrome and Edge and

(58:33):
they would take us with them, right because we can
install install grocery on every browser from Safari on iOS
to Edge on Windows and whatever you have. And we
saw a massive increase in users during that time.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
What about AI, because now a lot of people have
switched to these AI tools and they're feeding a lot
of personal information into them. Is there any privacy implications there?

Speaker 5 (59:00):
They could be, but at the moment it's still what
we call first party, which means that you know, when
you're talking to open AI or charg GPT, you know
that you're talking to chuldg GBT, you are willing fully
putting your information there, and you know maybe they will
use it, maybe not one day, but you are fully
conscious of that. What we do is more the stuff
you don't see. Right, So if you go to my

(59:23):
favorite example, you know you have maybe your mother or
father goes to arp website, why are there sixty companies
lurking in the background that they don't see on the website? Right?
Why why are all these trackers in the back? That's
what we take care to remove. So I think when
people are in a one to one relationship with the

(59:43):
website that they want to visit, they are perfectly conscious
of what's going on. There is no big risk there.
The problem is is you go to a website and
you just don't see what people collect and then what
they do with it later.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
What's this American Privacy Rights Act And how's that going
to impact the average consumers online privacy?

Speaker 5 (01:00:03):
I mean, I'm not a lawyer nor an American by
the way, but I know what regulation tends to do.
They tend to say, well, before you do this, you
have to ask for consents. And the problem with that
is that the big companies are always getting the consent.
So you've clicked at one point to a Google button
in Google that says Google can collect whatever they want
from me, or you go to a website as a

(01:00:25):
pop up and you click on it really rapidly because
you want to do what you want to do on
it that side, and then they get the right to
collect the data forever and ever and ever. So I
think it's very important that you protect yourself with one
of these tools. On top in Ghost three, we have
something called never consent, which means that automatically we answer

(01:00:46):
no to the question of whether they can collect your data.

Speaker 1 (01:00:48):
Oh, you're going to ask about that, so you mean
for all those like because I mean you said you're
not an American, so that I think Europe is where
we have to thank for the all those pop ups,
for the cookies exactly, so you know, so everyone always
has to struggle with those things on the website. Do
you guys automatically kind of say no to those yes.

Speaker 5 (01:01:08):
So we have a system that not only blocks the
pop up so you don't see it, but also remove
consents because the problem in many legislation, I think, including
most of the states in America, is that if you
don't answer, it means you can, right, and so it's
quite important to say no, and we do this on
your behalf without having you to go through seven layers

(01:01:31):
of multiple choice questions before you can say no.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
All right, well that's worth it right there. And so
how do you guys, how do you guys make money?
How does ghost three? Is there a paid or is
it all free or what?

Speaker 5 (01:01:43):
We are very very small teams, so first of all,
we don't lose too much money by not having too
many people and being a small, dedicated team. And we
live on quite substantial donations in the meantime, So people
can subscribe to because contributors, and they help us discover
new trackers, and they help us by giving us a

(01:02:05):
few dollars per month if they want to. But you
don't get more protection by being a contributor.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
And do you feel like these privacy conversations are overblown
or do you feel like people should actually think about
this stuff and take some action.

Speaker 5 (01:02:23):
I think it's not overblown at all, because when you
look at what's going on, it is quite enormous. And
I think that the old contract that somehow implicitly was
between advertiser, publisher and reader of viewer has been broken
by this invisible thing, right because before it was quite clear,

(01:02:45):
like you had a radio show and you had a
lot of attention, and then an advertiser would want to
sort of piggyback on that attention and would give you, you know, money,
and the middleman between you and the advertiser would maybe
collect fifteen percent. This is not true today. The middleman
tends to collect up to eighty five percent. Oh wow.

(01:03:06):
And spy and spies on you. You know, you never
spied on your on your listeners before. Right, You just
had a that that you think they would like and
then you got paid for it.

Speaker 4 (01:03:18):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:03:18):
You didn't know need to know what I was doing
five minutes before in the supermarket. Uh. And I think
that this we need to go back to that more
than this ultra targeted advertising.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):
All right, We're gonna leave it there. Very interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:03:32):
I'm always interested in the privacy aspect of everything, and
it's just continuing to be such a huge aspect of
our online lives. JP Schmittz of CEO of Ghostory. You
can check out the website. It is ghostory dot com.
If you want to check out their tool, I'll link

(01:03:52):
it up on my website. Rich on tech dot TV,
thanks for joining me today.

Speaker 5 (01:03:57):
Thanks you Rich?

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
All right eight Rich one on.

Speaker 1 (01:04:00):
One eight eight eight seven four two four one zero one.
Speaking of privacy, Google Auto and rolling your Android devices
in their new find My network.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
I'll tell you what you need to know about that
coming up next. Welcome back to rich on Tech.

Speaker 17 (01:04:18):
Right, let's go to.

Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
Martin in Palm.

Speaker 17 (01:04:22):
D California and the Golden Belly.

Speaker 2 (01:04:25):
Martin, you're on, You're on live.

Speaker 17 (01:04:28):
I'm just going to get your supercharged for a few minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
And okay, well get that thing supercharge. You're on with
rich On Tech.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
Are you there? Okay? I think we're gonna go. We're
gonna Martin.

Speaker 1 (01:04:42):
Okay, we're gonna give Let's go to uh.

Speaker 2 (01:04:48):
Pick, Let's go TV.

Speaker 18 (01:04:50):
Let's and I can and I can just emailing.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Let's go to is this Granny Rich? What is happening here?
I don't know what's happening here.

Speaker 18 (01:04:59):
I'm going to.

Speaker 1 (01:05:01):
Okay, I don't know what is going on their phone lines.
Granny Rich, you're on with rich Are you there?

Speaker 19 (01:05:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 18 (01:05:09):
I was just wanting to know what your number one
anti virus disc for a desktop computer. It's Windows ten.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Are okay? Good question.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
So in Windows ten, they actually have anti virus built
in so you can do that, which is fine, but
if you want to step it up a notch, I
would recommend checking out a website called a vtest dot org,
and that is the website that will tell you they
do tests on a monthly basis. And right now their

(01:05:46):
number one is A vast a.

Speaker 18 (01:05:48):
V A S A B is in Banana.

Speaker 4 (01:05:51):
A v.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
Oh my gosh, I'm forgetting my my own av Victor. Yeah,
A Victor. That's it, yeah, Apple Victor.

Speaker 10 (01:06:00):
And what's the rest of it?

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
A vast av A S T and that is a
free anti virus. Obviously it's a freemium, so they're going
to try to sell you on the you know, the
more premium version. But this gets great ratings. It's a
top product. It generally is highly rated among a lot
of the tech folks out there. So you can take

(01:06:21):
a look at that website, though, you know.

Speaker 18 (01:06:23):
Can I can I repeat this again? A vs in Victor,
A S is and sam tasn't tom correct A vast Okay, yeah,
because my computer came with a microsf what is it
McAfee and my computer guy came in yesterday and told me,
he said, well, you need you need to get a
disc granny. He said, because this your speed. He said,

(01:06:45):
your speeds aren't what did he say, kicking in and
he said one is like one O two and one
is seventy nine. And I said, well, I have McAfee
and I pay it once a year. And he said, well,
you need to get another one. So thanks for telling
me about this one. I'm going to try it because
my computer is HP, like I said, and it's about

(01:07:06):
five years old, and this is about my fifth one.
I went to HEWITTT Packers because I liked Compact. But
that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:07:14):
Okay, Well check out that website. Yeah you're welcome. Good
luck with that.

Speaker 1 (01:07:18):
But check out the website av dash test dot org
if you're looking for anti virus for any of your devices.
This is an independent institute that does a lot of
tests on so here it is. It says during March
in April twenty twenty four, we continuously evaluated seventeen home
user security products using their default settings.

Speaker 2 (01:07:41):
And this is what they came up with.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
So a vast number one AVEG, which I believe is
the same company, number two of YOURA number three bitdefender
for Enigma Soft five E set number six f secure
And then it's interesting the big brand names that you
see advertised the most are actually the lowest on the list,
which I find very very interesting. All right, let's see

(01:08:07):
if let's see if Martin. Let's let's peak in on
Martin again.

Speaker 5 (01:08:11):
Martin?

Speaker 2 (01:08:11):
Are you there?

Speaker 17 (01:08:12):
Yes? I am here.

Speaker 2 (01:08:13):
Oh hey, what's up Martin? Welcome to rich On Tech.
What can I help you with?

Speaker 5 (01:08:17):
Thank you for taking my call?

Speaker 17 (01:08:19):
Let me a little background. We developed a self You've.

Speaker 2 (01:08:23):
Got to be very quick because we only have a
couple of minutes here.

Speaker 17 (01:08:27):
Oh okay, I know. There's a way you can run
a browser application and compallably MOLDE for Internet Explorer, Microsoft Age. However,
after a month expires all the time, so always get
calls from my users, try to walk them through and
set up the compellable mode. Again, is there any way
we can sit down I stay longer than one month?

Speaker 1 (01:08:50):
Well, I wouldn't recommend that support for Internet Explorer ended
in twenty twenty two, so anyone that's using something that
works through that compatibility mode is at risk.

Speaker 5 (01:09:02):
I know, I know.

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
So why are you not updating the program?

Speaker 17 (01:09:06):
Well, we have a new version of the program, by
some old timers still try to use it. The old
version of the software because it still has some old
data and they didn't need to retrieve. So that's why
we haven't transferred any data from the old system to
the new one. Some of the data still in the
old system.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
Well, the only thing I can think of, I mean,
I'm guessing they're doing like the flags inside Edge to
turn on the compatibility mode.

Speaker 2 (01:09:31):
Is that how you're doing it?

Speaker 17 (01:09:33):
Yeah, you come to the setting and default.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
Yeah, So I mean, if that's resetting, obviously that's a
Microsoft security concern. They're toggling that off by default every
thirty days. The only thing I can think of, and
I can't recommend this widely because obviously you know there
are inherent risks with you with using this in a
mode that is not supported anymore. But I would say
the only thing you might be able to do is

(01:09:58):
find an extension that might continue to keep that enabled,
or an extension that runs that mode permanently.

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
That's my thought.

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
But again, I think it's best to try to urge
these people to update, because you just don't want to
be running something that has not been supported in two years,
because there are a lot of security implications of that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
So I understand the reasoning.

Speaker 1 (01:10:23):
But I also see why Microsoft is forcing those changes.
But again, there might be some extension that would would
do that. I don't know of one off the top
of my head, but that might be a good way
to kind of search for something that keeps that that
flag in place even after those thirty days. All right,
the website rich on Tech dot TV eight eight eight

(01:10:46):
seven four to two four one zero one eight eight
eight rich one oh one.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
Man, do we just go through a whole another hour
of this show? Well, we got another hour coming up.
That's the good news. And coming up we'll take more
of your questions. I'll tell you about this whole uh
Android find my network, and I'll tell you how to
find some hidden games on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (01:11:07):
That's kind of fun. It's all coming up right here
on rich on Tech. Welcome back to rich on Tech.
This is how we do it for tech news. Eight
eight eight rich one oh one eight eight eight seven
four two four one zero one. Welcome to another hour
of the show.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
Coming up.

Speaker 1 (01:11:28):
This hour, we're gonna talk to a Neil Subberwall of
Google Fitbit. He's gonna discuss details on that new Fitbit
ace LTE. This is the connected smart watch for kids.
He's gonna explain what it does, what it's useful for,
and they're thinking behind creating it. Speaking of Android, you

(01:11:49):
might get a notification on your Android device that says
do you want to join the Find my Device network?
So you're gonna get a notification because Google is turning
this on for over a billion devices. This is the
equivalent of Apple's Find My network that launched with the
air tag. Apple has had their network up and running

(01:12:13):
for a couple of years now. Google is just getting
theirs up and running. So you're gonna see a whole
push for gadgets that tap into this find my Device network,
So things like air tags, except on the Google side,
So a bunch of different products, Chappolo, Tile, They're all
going to have these devices that tap into this network.

(01:12:35):
And these are for Android phones along with your Android devices.
So you're gonna see earbuds, you're gonna see headphones, You're
gonna see a lot of different things be able to
be found with this new network. But how this network
works is through all of your devices. So let me
give you an example. Your phone. You have an Android phone,

(01:12:57):
it's sitting on your desk at work. Someone loses their
keys with one of these little find my trackers attached
to their key. Well, that little tracker has Bluetooth in it.
Your phone is scanning around your workplace looking for all
these different devices all the time, and it finds that
little tracker. It reports that location back to Google, and

(01:13:17):
that person that lost their keys goes onto their phone
and says, now, where did I drop my keys? And
the phone says, oh, we saw it in at your
work underneath this desk or whatever. So that's how it works.
And so this relies on millions upon millions of devices
scanning using Bluetooth and helping locate these other devices. Now,

(01:13:40):
this is all done privately. It's all done encrypted. Nobody's
seeing where your phone is. Your phone is not seeing
where these other devices are. It's all done encrypted and privately,
so only the person that owns that device can actually
see where that lost item is. This find my Device
network collects current location, battery level, Wi Fi network, and

(01:14:02):
signal strength to help locate these online devices. For offline devices, yes,
your phone could be offline and it still might be
able to be found with this new network. Now some
of the newer devices have that functionality. I know the
pixels do, but not every device is going to have
that offline identifying information. So why I'm telling you this

(01:14:24):
is because you might get an email that says, hey,
we're going to opt you into this network if you
don't say anything within the next three days. So if
you don't mind helping out and being a part of
this network, just let it go. It will opt you
in automatically. If you don't want to be a part
of this network, if you don't want to help find
devices using your devices, you can opt out. And the

(01:14:44):
way you opt out is following that link in the
notification you get or the email you get, or you
can go to this website Google dot com, slash Android,
slash find, slash settings, slash FM d end find my
Device Network. I know that's a long website. Google dot com,

(01:15:06):
slash Android, slash find, slash settings, slash fmd N. I
will put that link on my website. Rich on tech
dot tv in the show notes, this is show number
sixty seventy four. Tap the light bulb at the top
of the screen to get into those show note links.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
That is the deal.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
You can also opt out at any time, So even
if you let this auto opt in, and you decide
later on, you know what, I don't want to be
a part of this network. You can still opt out now.
Even if you don't opt into helping find other devices,
you can still use find my Device to locate your
devices when they're online. So it's not necessarily a two

(01:15:49):
way street, like you don't have to participate to actually
help find your devices, but it would be nice if
you help participate.

Speaker 2 (01:15:55):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:15:55):
I think there's enough Android devices in the world where
even if you say no, there's still going to be
enough people that make this pretty accurate and pretty good.
But this is a huge, huge new undertaking by Android
to help you find your device anywhere it is in
the world when it is lost. And it's going to
implement this functionality for so many devices. You're going to

(01:16:17):
see wallets with this find my network, You're going to
see tracker tags, you're going to see headphones, all kinds
of Android devices moving forward are probably going to have
this built in as an appealing feature to help you
find these devices if they are ever lost. Let's go
to ed in Los Angeles or ed in Las Vegas.

(01:16:38):
ED you're on with rich Las Vegas.

Speaker 12 (01:16:40):
That's right, Thank you, Rich. I appreciate you taking my call.

Speaker 5 (01:16:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:16:44):
So my situation is that I have had for years
Amazon Music that is now being charged I believe nine
ninety ten dollars a month, and I was told that
Prime Music comes free with your Prime membership, which we

(01:17:04):
are also paying for. Are they the same thing? I
know that on the Amazon Music I can play any artist,
any soundtrack from any movie, any Broadway, play any artist
with any song they ever recorded. Is it the same
music provided by Prime Music that I could stop paying,

(01:17:27):
you know, the one hundred and twenty dollars a year
and get it for free and along with my Prime.

Speaker 2 (01:17:31):
Members It is not the same.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
So it is there is a little bit extra that
you get with the paid Prime, you know, the unlimited.
And this is where it gets very confusing for Amazon
to do this because they've given a lot of stuff
for free. I mean, they really are giving you a
lot for free. If you have a Prime membership, you
can get what's called all Access playlists. So these are

(01:17:57):
playlists that let you pick any song and played on
demand and no skip limits, no you know, or you
can even listen to them offline by downloading them. So,
but that is a select group of songs. So I
would say my main difference between what you're paying for
and what you get for free is the choice of

(01:18:18):
what you get to listen to.

Speaker 2 (01:18:21):
On demand.

Speaker 12 (01:18:22):
That is the more do playlist or downloads because I'm blind.

Speaker 2 (01:18:26):
So okay, but you know I can just saysk.

Speaker 12 (01:18:29):
Thee abot to play anything from Rihanna to Elvis. I
can play Duing Eddies nineteen fifty nine, forty Miles the
Bad Road, and it'll play it. Yeah, any song anything
I want. But you're saying the Prime Music doesn't give me.

Speaker 1 (01:18:45):
That, well, so what's going to happen on the Prime Music?
There is a selection of songs, so I believe they've
thrown out like a number, right, so there is like
a certain amount. So with Amazon Music Prime members get
access to one hundred million songs AD free. Right with

(01:19:05):
Amazon Music Unlimited you get a hundred million songs in
HD and million millions of songs in ultra HD. So
if you have like a super high quality setup, you
would get a better audio quality. But the main difference is,
let's say if you stop paying for this, right ed,
if you stop if you stop paying for your unlimited

(01:19:25):
and you say I want to play Rihanna and I
want to play a certain song by Rihanna, right, and
it doesn't have that song the Free membership. The Prime
membership will just play a song similar to that song,
and you may be none the wiser. You may say, oh,
I asked it to play Rihanna's Shut Up and Drive

(01:19:46):
or whatever, and it plays something related to that. And
so not everything is going to be you know, it's
not going to have the entire catalog like Amazon Music
Unlimited does because you are paying, and also you get
to listen offline. You get Unlimited skips. So if you
don't like a song that it plays on the Amazon

(01:20:06):
Prime and use press skip, yes, it'll skip to the
next song, but you're only gonna have a certain amount
of skips per hour before it says nope, you've got
to listen to this song.

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
And the reason they're doing that, whereas.

Speaker 12 (01:20:17):
On the Unlimited, I can you say next and it'll
go the next song on the artist I'm listening.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
To exactly, So there is a difference between the two.
What I'd say, ed is try it. I mean, you
could always cancel the Unlimited and I know you said
you paid for a year in advance, so you can
cancel that now, continue to use it for the year,
and then when it when it lapses, you can just
default to the Prime Music. If you have an Amazon

(01:20:44):
you have an Amazon Prime membership, Yes we do, so
if you have Amazon Prime, you can let it default
to that and you can try it out. I mean,
I think there are a lot of people out there
that are just using Amazon Music Prime for free that
it just works. And you know how many times are
you skipping a song in an hour? You don't notice?
So if it saves you one hundred and twenty bucks

(01:21:04):
a year and everything's fine, that's great.

Speaker 2 (01:21:07):
But you did you did quite.

Speaker 12 (01:21:08):
Say we pay by the year.

Speaker 4 (01:21:10):
I'm sure you got that.

Speaker 2 (01:21:11):
Poh, well, then I mean, maybe just cancel it.

Speaker 12 (01:21:13):
And I think I said we pay one hundred and
twenty bucks a year, but I was just giving a
figure and I got it. We don't pay by the year.
I'm builled once a month, nine ninety nine.

Speaker 2 (01:21:24):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:21:25):
Well, I mean, now here's the other thing. I don't
know if that's grandfathered in, because I do know that
they have raised prices on the Amazon Music Unlimited, so
I would check to see, let me see exactly what
that price is now because I.

Speaker 12 (01:21:39):
Really appreciate your time. You're doing a great job than
could you.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):
Okay, so it says starts at nine ninety nine, a
month after the thirty day trial, so it sounds like
it's still the same price. But here's the thing, Ed,
when you called out those songs, you sound like you're
kind of a music guy, and so yes, I feel
like you like your music and you like to be
able to say the song that you want to hear,

(01:22:02):
and you kind of know a lot of this stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:22:04):
So I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:22:06):
You may not be happy with the you know, the
the kind of randomness of the free version.

Speaker 12 (01:22:12):
But right, I get what I want.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
Yeah, I think it's worth try.

Speaker 12 (01:22:15):
In other words, right, you're.

Speaker 1 (01:22:17):
Not really losing anything by trying it out for a month,
so I might try.

Speaker 2 (01:22:21):
That's what happens.

Speaker 12 (01:22:22):
How can I try it out at the same time
I'm paying for the unlimited and now am I going
to know which one I'm pulling from?

Speaker 1 (01:22:29):
No, I don't think you can do that because it's
the same thing unless you set up a different Amazon account.
But that's you know, you're under your prime account. That's
going to be kind of tricky to do. So all right,
I say.

Speaker 12 (01:22:39):
Thank you very much.

Speaker 4 (01:22:40):
Rich.

Speaker 12 (01:22:40):
Yeah, I appreciate the show very.

Speaker 1 (01:22:41):
Much, appreciate the kind words, ed, thanks for calling today.
Eight eight eight rich one O one eight eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
Coming up, I'll tell you where to find some games
to play on YouTube.

Speaker 1 (01:22:55):
What Yeah, they're there, I'll tell you where to find them.
Coming up right here on rich on Tech. Welcome back
to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology. The
website for the show rich on Tech dot tv. You
can find me on social media. I am at rich
on Tech. If you want links to anything I mentioned

(01:23:17):
on the show, you go to the website. There is
a light bulb at the top. You tap that light
bulb and it will take you to the wiki for
the show, which has every show we've ever done, plus
the links to every show, so you can get links
in real time. And if you're listening later, you can
just look at the podcast section. It will have the
show and it will have all of the links there

(01:23:39):
as well as the audio of the show. You can
also subscribe by searching rich on Tech and your favorite
audio player. Let's go to Carol in Los Angeles. Carol,
you're on with rich.

Speaker 20 (01:23:53):
Hi, thank you so much for taking your call. I
love the song you played long times understand it that
was very appropriate. Thank you. Briefly, I was hacked on
a crypto exchange of Gemini, which is you know, very
big like point based crack in US base, and I
was hacked and had a lot of money stolen in
ten minutes. There were two hundred transactions converted the bitcoint

(01:24:16):
and then too something called Orchid, which I understand it
is a little more secretive and hard to track, so
trying to figure out what happened. You know, I'm a
very simple user. I'm not on my computer very much
and just make my investments. They've identified from three years
ago that there was an API that was generated and

(01:24:38):
this was used to bypass two factor authentication which I
had on the account and somehow get in and hack it.
It wasn't password or email, it was this API. And
indeed three years ago I was using something called token tax,
which you're supposed to use to pay your taxes, you know,
with a software interface that helps you do the right

(01:24:59):
thing and and sort of pull in from a few
exchanges you may be on and then calculate your taxes.
Gem and I would not think though with token tax
it never sinks, unlike a couple of the other exchanges
like binance us or crack, and it never thinks. And
that's it. I mean, I didn't do anything else. And

(01:25:19):
now three years later they identified twenty twenty one, maybe
there was this one API.

Speaker 1 (01:25:24):
Yeah, so here's what happened. So some so this there.
So what you're talking about is basically a token. And
so it's an API key that you would generate and
a lot of different not every not a lot, but
there are accounts out there that can interface with another
account by generating one of these. It's basically a trusted token.

(01:25:48):
It's kind of like it's saying like, hey, you can
access this account anytime you want, because I'm giving you
this token to my account, even if you change the password,
even if you change your settings, they will have that
token until you revoke that token. So what happened was
it sounds like you somehow generated a token back in
twenty twenty one. You might have given it to another website.

(01:26:13):
That website at the time was fine, but someone might
have gotten into that website since and they hacked into
that site and they got through to your account based
on that linkage between those two accounts.

Speaker 2 (01:26:25):
Does that make sense? Is that how you understand it?

Speaker 1 (01:26:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 20 (01:26:29):
But on what side? Like so if Gemini, for example,
doesn't have this interface because they couldn't sync up or
at least this token tax cunt interface with Gemini, did Gemini?
Why would Gemini make this this API number one? Wouldn't

(01:26:49):
it be short lived? They're not supposed to last very long?
And then similarly, on the other side, token text, if
they received it and it wasn't sinking on it, then
not stay there and be live to be hacked like what?

Speaker 5 (01:27:05):
Well, I don't think.

Speaker 2 (01:27:06):
Yeah, it is confusing.

Speaker 1 (01:27:07):
I don't know the details of how this this token
got out. I mean, once it's generated, it does typically
stay indefinitely as far as I know. And a lot
of times, you know, developers use these tokens. They use
these keys to Let's say I'm developing an app for
open Ai, Right, So what happens is I use the

(01:27:28):
the like I pay open ai for a certain amount
of access, right, and then they give me this token
that lets me use that inside my programming application. And
that way, that token says, oh, this is Rich's account,
we know that he pays us he can access all
this stuff and so that there's there are valid reasons
why this exists. I think for you, first off, I

(01:27:51):
feel so bad that this happened to you, and it
sounds like there's no recourse.

Speaker 20 (01:27:54):
Huh, we don't know. I in my opinion, three years
down the road and it's nowhere on my stuff, it's
on their stuff, and it just lived. I since have
been able to have something just living and then someone
gets it.

Speaker 1 (01:28:08):
Right, So, yeah, did they tell you how much money
are we talking here?

Speaker 20 (01:28:12):
We're talking a lot of money, enough money that it matters.
So no, I think that they have responsibility. They sind
have generated if they couldn't think, and then if they
could think, then then it should go away. That's why
I'm asking how long should these things last? It seemed
like it was very temporary and then it couldn't work
and then it should have just dissolved and gone away.

(01:28:34):
It doesn't fit somewhere.

Speaker 2 (01:28:36):
Yeah, No, they typically are. They are pretty pretty everlasting.
But here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:28:41):
I would really get on Gemini and really really push
them and for them to explain how this happened exactly
and why you're responsible for this, what turns out to
be fraud eighty eight rich one on one eight eight
seven four to two four one zero one more rich
on Tech coming up right after this. Yes, welcome back

(01:29:01):
to rich on Tech. Rich Demiro here talking technology. There's
a new connected smart watch for kids. It's called the
Google Fitbit ace Lte, and it's a new device that
I think parents are going to like. It's kind of

(01:29:23):
up against the Apple Watch, but there are some key differences.
This was designed with kids in mind. It's coming out
on June fifth, and uh to talk about it. I
recently chatted with a Neil Summerwall of Google Fitbit. He's
gonna explain what it's all about.

Speaker 2 (01:29:39):
So what inspired the development of the Fitbit ace Lte.

Speaker 19 (01:29:44):
Well, the fiffit acelt actually is a very personal story.
It comes from my own experience with my daughters who
were eight and ten a few years ago and my
wife and I weren't ready to take the plunge and
buy phone for many reasons I'm sure that you're aware of,
and so we went out looking for an alternative and
we found kids smart watches and we said this was great.

Speaker 15 (01:30:04):
So we bought our daughters to these kids.

Speaker 19 (01:30:06):
Smart watches, thinking that they would allow us to call
message and know.

Speaker 15 (01:30:09):
Where they were.

Speaker 19 (01:30:11):
Surprisingly, or perhaps not surprisingly in hindsight, our kids would
accidentally forget to charge them, or they would leave them
at home by mistake, And what we realized really quickly
was that they saw them more as tracking devices rather
than devices that helped them feel more independent. And so
the inspiration for this device was for parents who were
looking for an alternative. Could we provide a device that

(01:30:36):
kids loved that was built for kids, not an adult
device that was scaled back for kids, or a device
that condescends to kids. But could we build a device
that kids loved.

Speaker 15 (01:30:46):
And parents loved.

Speaker 2 (01:30:47):
So tell me about some of the features on this
fibit ace LTE because it is a fibit, but it's
also a smart watch, it's also a gaming device, so
kind of give me the basic features.

Speaker 15 (01:30:58):
What can you do?

Speaker 2 (01:30:59):
I like the fact that it has LTE in the name,
that tells me that it's cellular connected.

Speaker 15 (01:31:05):
Exactly right. Richie touched on the three main principles of
the products.

Speaker 19 (01:31:09):
So the first is that it's all about inspiring healthy
and active movement in kids through play. But then number two,
as you touched on how could we do it in
a new and inspirational way, and that's where we use
gaming as the mechanism to do it. So we have
these really compelling, interactive three D games that we've built.

Speaker 15 (01:31:29):
That are immersive. They're fun.

Speaker 19 (01:31:32):
You are fishing, you're dancing, you're a chicken and a
bathtub racing through space. The only currency is movement and
so that's principal number two. And then the third one,
which you talked about, is the LTE connectivity. And that's
so important because what we want to have is a
mechanism for kids to feel like they're growing independence. So
we have calling, messaging and location sharing. We're using Google's technology,

(01:31:56):
so we have Google Maps, so it's not just GPS,
which is often very accurate.

Speaker 15 (01:32:00):
It's using Google Maps as technology.

Speaker 19 (01:32:02):
That's using Wi Fi and other mechanisms so that you
can get pinpoint accuracy even inside buildings.

Speaker 15 (01:32:09):
So, because it.

Speaker 1 (01:32:09):
Does have the cellular built in, can you touch upon
how that's going to work? Are people going to add
this as a device on their current plan?

Speaker 2 (01:32:18):
Is it a standalone plan? And how do you activate
it and all that stuff.

Speaker 19 (01:32:22):
The device comes with the fitbit ace app. You download
that on iOS or on androids, So as a parent,
you simply download that app and then we have everything
all included in that app. We wanted to make setup
as simple and easy as possible. You sign in with
your Google account and we offer you the ace Pass
Data Plan, so we provide everything with the LTE connectivity.

(01:32:46):
The data plan is offered at nine to ninety nine
a month or one hundred and twenty dollars for the
annual subscription. With that, not only do you get all
of the lt connectivity, but you get all of the games,
all of the experiences for Kise.

Speaker 15 (01:33:00):
We have a whole host of parental controls.

Speaker 19 (01:33:02):
That we offer that allows you, as a parent, for example,
to add trusted contacts so that they can also call
and message the child if you have an uncle and
and a grandparent. That's all part of the subscription service
as well. And the annual subscription also includes a collectible band,
and we'll talk about the bands in a minute. And
the band itself is valued at thirty five dollars, so

(01:33:24):
you get that is the annual subscription, and for the
next three months until August thirty first, we're running a
promotion where that annual subscription is actual only sixty dollars,
So you can get the device, get up and running
with the fifbit ace pass and for sixty dollars you
get one year of LT connectivity, all of those updates
over the course of the year, all of those parental controls,
and a free thirty five dollars band.

Speaker 2 (01:33:44):
Wow, that's a great deal. Let's talk about the durability
of this device. Because it's kids. You know this thing
is going to get wet, it's going to get dirty,
it's going to be bumped around. So tell me about
the aspect of durability.

Speaker 19 (01:33:59):
Every part of this device has been built from the
ground up. It's a device that I'm incredibly proud of
because we took a clean sheet of paper and we
started from how do we build a device for kids?
And exactly as you said, when you're thinking about hardware design,
you have to think about how kids use it. So
a simple example, one of the first tests we insisted
on is it has to pass the washing machine test.

(01:34:21):
So if a kid forgets it in their clothes and
it ends up in the laundry, can the device survive?
And the answer in our case is absolutely yes. Because
that was a really cool part of curability. We also
include a free bumper in the box for added protection,
so it just clips on. But the band itself is
what you feel on your skin most of the time,
and so we have done a textile band which is really.

Speaker 15 (01:34:42):
Comfort uses recycled yarn.

Speaker 19 (01:34:44):
It has a single loop that attaches with a velcro strap.

Speaker 15 (01:34:48):
Really easy for kids and really comfortable.

Speaker 2 (01:34:50):
Tell me about the tech aspect of the band. What
does it do when it connects to the actual watch.

Speaker 19 (01:34:55):
So the device has NFC, which it uses for things
like Have to Pay, which be launching in a couple
of months, but the band itself does not have NFC.
It has another patented technology that we put in it
that allows us that when you connect the band to
the device, the device will recognize which band you've attached.
So we have six collectible bands that we're launching and

(01:35:17):
depending on which band that you plug in, the device
will recognize that. It'll wake up your eg which is
this virtual companion.

Speaker 15 (01:35:26):
You have almost a tamagatchi that you take care of
on the device.

Speaker 19 (01:35:29):
So we really want it to feel like a gaming
cartridge that you can trade and you can collect.

Speaker 2 (01:35:33):
What ages do you think this watch is geared towards
and also I'd like you to touch upon privacy because
this is going to be collecting a lot of data
about minors, so how is Google handling that data.

Speaker 19 (01:35:46):
We believe that this device is about motivating activity and
play and movement through gaming, and the sweet spot for
this device is typically between the ages of around seven
to eleven. That's really what we've thought of when we
designed the device, because not only have we built the
games and the activity and the movements inspired around that,
that's also typically where kids are reaching a level of

(01:36:08):
independence where they're starting to maybe spend more time on
their own, go to sleepovers, go to camp, go pick
the public transport to school, perhaps be.

Speaker 15 (01:36:16):
It home alone.

Speaker 19 (01:36:17):
But parents are looking for an alternative to that phone,
and parents are waiting typically till twelve thirteen years of
age before they buy that first phone. So as an
alternative to the phone, this is an ideal product in
that age rain that sweet spot of seven to eleven.
Seven to twelve to your second question about privacy, and
I'm really glad you asked that question because that has

(01:36:38):
been a driving principle of this product from day one.
So a couple of examples you can access location on
this device. That location is only shared with the parent,
and it is deleted from all of our systems within
twenty four hours.

Speaker 15 (01:36:51):
We never hold on to that data.

Speaker 19 (01:36:53):
Similarly, the activity data, and so we delete it from
all of our systems and all of our servers within
thirty five days. There are no first party apps on
the device. There's no app store to download other apps.
There are no ads on the device whatsoever. There never
will be. None of the data is being used by
Google four Ads or any other reason. It really, truly

(01:37:14):
is a device that's been built with privacy and data
minimization right at the forefront. We feel that this device
is yeah, unlike anything out there, and certainly for parents
who've got kids in that seven to eleven and looking
for an alternative before they take the plunge in the
first phone, we think this is an ideal device.

Speaker 2 (01:37:32):
All right.

Speaker 1 (01:37:32):
There you have it, a Neil summerwall of Google Fitbit.
The one thing to know about the Fitbit ace LTE,
like I mentioned earlier, is that it does not get
assigned a traditional phone number. So if you're thinking that
your kid will have what equates to sort of a
smartphone on their wrist with a phone number.

Speaker 2 (01:37:53):
That is not the way this works.

Speaker 1 (01:37:54):
It is a app connected device, so when you make
a call to the child or a message, it all
goes through that fitbit app on your phone. And yeah,
you can have up to twenty different contacts. They're all
gonna have to download that fitbit app app and be
linked in and able to access and talk to this device.
So that's just one thing to know. The fitbit ace

(01:38:17):
LT is gonna be two hundred and thirty dollars. It's
on sale on June fifth through Amazon also the Google Store,
and then the service is ten bucks a month one
hundred and twenty dollars for the year, but right now
for the launch, they're doing a deal where it's sixty
dollars for the first year. Once again, my kid is
testing this out right now. So far, so good, as
long as you're aware of the limitation of not an

(01:38:40):
assigned phone number. All right, Coming up next, I'm gonna
tell you where to find some games on YouTube, and
if you want to watch TV for free, Filo has
a new subscription free service plus your favorite segment, the
Feedback coming up next right here.

Speaker 2 (01:38:57):
On rich on Tech.

Speaker 1 (01:39:00):
Welcome back to rich on Tech. That song must mean
it is time to close out the show. Two more
stories before we get to the feedback segment. First off,
you can now play games on YouTube. Yes, there are
more than seventy five games now directly accessible through the
YouTube app, no additional downloads necessary. There are popular games

(01:39:24):
like Angry Birds, Showdown, Cut the Rope, Tomb of the Mask,
Trivia Crack in My Favorite Words of Wonders. You can
track your all time best scores, share your progress. You
can even bookmark your favorite games. These are being gradually
rolled out to users over the coming months, but if
you want to check to see if you have them,

(01:39:46):
open up the YouTube app on your phone. So go
to YouTube, open it up, and then you might need
to pull down on the screen a little bit. But
up in the upper left hand corner, there's something that
looks like it's like a circle, looks like a navigation circle.
You tap that and that will bring you to the menu.
Scroll down all the way to the bottom of the menu.

(01:40:06):
Were almost to the bottom, and it'll say playables. You
tap that and you can see all the different games
that are available for play. Kind of fun to have
these games built right into your phone. So there you go.
Seventy five games on YouTube to Play and Filo. This
is a streaming service that has been available for a

(01:40:27):
couple of years. Now they have a new level of
service that is completely free, so you can watch over
seventy free ad supported TV channels. They call this fast
free ad supported Television. Yeah, like regular TV. Non subscribers
can watch this for free and even record these channels

(01:40:48):
without needing to subscribe to the Core package or even
provide a credit card. The TV channels include reality TV, music, news,
and classic television shows. It depends what you want to watch, right,
so check out the channel lineup see if it appeals
to you and you can get free access. You do
not need a subscription or a credit card, so they

(01:41:08):
say this is a great way for people who are
not ready to subscribe or maybe they're taking a break
from paying for the Core package.

Speaker 15 (01:41:15):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:41:16):
You're not gonna find this on their homepage. They don't
advertise this. This is you got to go to a
certain website Filo dot com slash go slash free channels
And if you go to the Filo dot com website,
you're not gonna see this on the homepage. But if
you go all the way down to the bottom. There's
a little link that says free channels. You tap that

(01:41:36):
and that is your secret way of getting in where
you can sign up for free. Of course, I'll link
that up on the website. Rich on tech dot TV.
All right, now on to the feedback segment. We got
a lot of comments about last week's show. One of
the callers said that he had a record player in
his car, and we were curious if that was actually true,

(01:41:58):
and it turns out, yes, there were record players in cars.
I still can't believe this. I still need to see this,
but I got a lot of emails about it. And
Len in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania said, Hey, Rich, remember it's likely
that the engineers who put a record player in cars
envisioned you playing records at a picnic or another outdoor
family event, not while you were actually driving down the road.

(01:42:21):
And many people sent me links to pictures and websites
about these record players. So, yes, thank you for all
of the comments about the record players. I got them.
No more necessary. Ivan in Vermont says, hey, Rich, this
is feedback about our EV interview. EV's are governed by physics,

(01:42:43):
plain and simple. An eight hundred mile EV trip from
Vermont to Michigan adds hours to the trip. EV's escaping
a hurricane along I seventy five in Florida, stuck in
miles long traffic jams. Can't just plug in and go
in minutes, buy one at your own peril. Meanwhile, having
a choice is a must, and the FEDS need to

(01:43:03):
keep their paws off the transportation industry. Thanks Ivan. It
was a debate last weekend we drove to Palm Desert.
Of course, my wife does not like to drive the
EV anywhere on a road trip because it adds time
and it adds annoyance, and yes, it was annoying. We
got to our friend's house. I was on empty and
I didn't want to plug in at their house because

(01:43:25):
I think that that is you know, you don't know
what their electricity is like there or how expensive it's
going to be.

Speaker 2 (01:43:29):
So yeah, it took me an hour.

Speaker 1 (01:43:31):
When everyone else was having drinks by the pool, I said, oh,
I got to go drive the car to the charger,
and it took an hour to go charge it up.

Speaker 2 (01:43:38):
Yeah, it's definitely a consideration.

Speaker 1 (01:43:41):
Pete from San Luis Obispo, California says, Hey, Rich, I
invite you to watch AI perversion on Prime.

Speaker 2 (01:43:48):
Is that something I can mention on the radio.

Speaker 1 (01:43:50):
It's truly fascinating how an AI powered virtual assistant can
make and execute decisions based on one's personality. It is
a French Subtitlepete. When I'm feeling like I want some
AI perversion, I will watch that. Germo in Los Angeles says, hey, Rich,
I have the T Mobile Unlimited Freedom Plan with taxes
and fees included, which was carried over from Sprint. I

(01:44:13):
have two phones and other devices. I have not received
any notification of a rate increase just yet. Also, you
can get the fifty five plus Magenta plan, but it's
not really advertised and it's not on the website. You
have to call in as it's buried on the phone
plan options. Yeah, a lot of people emailed me about
the T Mobile price increase and they are not happy,

(01:44:36):
and they are looking at other options, and I say,
look at those other options. There are many many alternatives
to the big three out there, mv and O's Visible
Mobile AX. We mentioned Tello, You've got Cricket, You've got Visible.
You've got so many that you can subscribe to that
have much cheaper plans with less data and no fee.

(01:45:01):
Kenny and Rhode Island writes in Hey Rich, a while back,
you mentioned that Google would be making its editing tools
Google Magic Editor, specifically available for free. I would believe
it was supposed to be available for iOS on May fifteenth. However,
I don't see it on my Apple fourteen Pro. I
contacted Google. They had me delete the app, reboot my phone,
reinstall it, but still no Magic Editor.

Speaker 2 (01:45:20):
Any ideas on why love the show? Thanks?

Speaker 1 (01:45:24):
Yes, The reason is it's rolling out the two most
hated words in the tech world. Rolling out means not
everyone gets it at the same time, and it means
if you're waiting for it, you're not gonna get it
for a long time because they know you're waiting for it. No,
they don't actually know that, but I'm just saying it.
So I just got this on a non pixel device,

(01:45:44):
so it is rolling out. It is happening. It showed
up on my Samsung S twenty four Ultra, so it
is a matter of time before it shows up in
your iOS iPhone device. It is not shown up on
my iPhone device. So I'm right there with you, Kenny,
and yes, I understand why you want it because it's
really cool. Jackie writes, I was scammed on social media
Facebook over a vacuum mop that was supposedly through QVC.

(01:46:07):
It looks so real, even with people demonstrating it, but
when I called QVC about my order, I found out
it was a scam. We live in a crazy world.
It's very scary these days, especially since everything is done
on computers and phones. I'm in my mid sixties and
all this technology is new and sometimes frustrating.

Speaker 2 (01:46:23):
Indeed, it can be. Ah, that's gonna do it.

Speaker 1 (01:46:27):
For the feedback, thanks so much for listening to this
episode of the show. You can find everything I mentioned
on my website. Just go to Richontech dot tv. You
can find me on social media. I am at rich
on Tech, and don't miss out on the newsletter packed
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up with your email at the website.

Speaker 2 (01:46:46):
Next week.

Speaker 1 (01:46:46):
I know I promised him for this week, but he's
gonna be next week. Drew Binski has gone to every
country in the world. I'm gonna have my interview with him.
Thank you so much for listening. There are so many
ways you can spend your time. I really do appreciate
you spending it right here with me. Thanks to everyone
who makes this show possible. Bobo Happy Birthday celebrating his
birthday this week, Kim Bill, Julie, and most importantly you.

(01:47:12):
You're not pushing any buttons, you're not choosing the music.
But guess what you tuned in. You listen to what
I have to say, and that means a lot to me.
My name is rich Demiro.

Speaker 2 (01:47:20):
Thanks so much for listening. I'm going to talk to
you real soon.

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Host

Rich DeMuro

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